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Williams pears in red wine sauce with polenta biscuits

An autumnal recipe that simply uses sweet, ripe pears and an uncomplicated Italian red wine to provide the flavour.

Preparation time:
30 minutes

Cooking time:
70 minutes

Total time:
1 hour 40 minutes

Serves:
Serves 6 (Makes about 50 biscuits)

Ingredients

Biscuits

200g Unsalted butter, softened

200g Granulated sugar

300g Quick-cook polenta

100g Plain flour

&frac12 tsp Baking powder

4 Eggs, beaten

1 Lemon, finely grated zest

Pears

6 Ripe Williams pears

1 Lemon, strips of pared zest only

150g Caster sugar

6 tbsp Whipped double cream

400 ml red wine

Method

Start with the biscuits. Preheat the oven to 200˚C/gas 6. Using a wooden spoon, mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Fill
a piping bag with the mixture and pipe little dots or S shapes onto a greased baking tray. Leave a generous amount of space between
the biscuits, as they will spread while baking.

Bake for 15 minutes, until golden. (Leave the oven on at the same temperature.) Allow to firm up on the baking tray, then cool on
a wire rack. Store in an airtight container.

While the biscuits cook, wash the pears and place upright in an ovenproof dish – they need to fit quite snugly. After the biscuits
come out, bake the pears for 35–40 minutes. Remove from the oven, pour over the wine and sprinkle over the lemon zest and sugar.
Bake for another 20 minutes, by which time the wine will have reduced and thickened.

Put the pears in a glass bowl, cover with the red wine syrup, allow to cool, then chill for at least two hours. Serve on plates with
the syrup poured over, a couple of biscuits and 1 tbsp whipped cream each.